


Amphitrite

by anistarrose



Series: Stan Twins Birthday Event 2018 [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Cats, Family Fluff, Gen, Sea Grunkles, gratuitous greek mythology references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-19 12:02:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14873402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anistarrose/pseuds/anistarrose
Summary: Ford is having a bad day trying to track down a sea monster when Stan unexpectedly returns to the boat with a cat.





	Amphitrite

**Author's Note:**

> Did you guys know that cats can be polydactyl? [And that sailors thought such cats were good luck?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polydactyl_cat#History_and_folklore) It was meant to be.

The tiny kitchen table in the Stan O’ War II wasn’t meant to hold very many things at once – it just didn’t have the surface area for much more than a few plates and cups. It luckily wasn’t in danger of collapsing, since most of the things Ford had on it were fairly light, but tracking down the [aspidochelone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspidochelone) was frustratingly inefficient when there was only enough room to spread out about one and a half maps at a time for comparison.

Normally Ford just would have used the desk in his on-board lab, but at the moment that entire room was crammed full of specimens that he didn’t have anywhere else to put. In a week’s time, he would be able to pass them on to a contact who would then arrange for them to be donated to a local cryptozoology museum, but for the time being, that desk had even less free space than this one. 

Ford had almost decided to take everything up on the deck of the boat and spread it all out there, but the last few days they’d spent on the Maine coast had been full of rain, and only about half of his maps were waterproof. Besides, Stan liked to hang out on the deck and sing, which Ford found genuinely funny only when he wasn’t trying to concentrate on anything.

Had there been any room on the table, he would have slammed his head into it. None of their sources could even agree whether the damn monster was a whale or a turtle. It had been sighted in Maine plenty of times over the past century, having apparently migrated over from the Mediterranean, but with the sheer number of normal islands off the state’s coast, trying to find a sentient one was nearly impossible.

“He _yyyyy_ , Ford! Old pal!” he heard Stan call from abovedecks, finally back from his supply run. The tone Stan took concerned him: it was a tone Stan only used when he’d (quite deliberately) done something wrong and knew that Ford was going to be at least moderately annoyed about it. “I’m back, and I brought you a surprise!”

“What did you steal?” Ford yelled back as he heard Stan open the hatch. He didn’t turn around, partly because he didn’t really _want_ to know what Stan had with him and partly because there was too much stuff on his lap for him to move without sending it all spilling over the floor.

“What? Steal?” Stan asked with mock horror. He must have been carrying something (concerningly) large, Ford realized, since he was taking a lot of time to get down the stairs. “I may have, you know, a criminal record and stuff, but _this_ is the most serious investment I’ve made in my entire life!” 

He set something on the floor – it sounded fairly heavy, but Stan set it down gently, then very quickly added under his breath: “Although, I might have shoplifted some of the food maybe, oh well too late to do anything about that now.”

Ford was about to say something in response to all of that, but he was interrupted by the sound of a latched being flipped, and then… meowing?

Why was there _meowing_? Not even Stan was impulsive enough to randomly buy a cat, Ford thought – except that as the current evidence seemed to suggest, he apparently _was_.

“Stanley, what the hell were you –”

Ford made the mistake of trying to turn around and _see_ the cat, inadvertently activating a practical Rube Goldberg machine of falling objects. The book in his lap fell to the ground, dragging with it a map that had been spread out with one end under the book in Ford’s lap and one end under the laptop on the table, and as the computer fell Ford dove forward to catch it – which he succeeded in doing, but not before he faceplanted on the floor and the cord on the mouse snagged on the handle of his coffee mug, causing its contents to be emptied all over Ford’s sweater.

Stan laughed until there were tears streaming down his face. And from beside him, green eyes stared at Ford as if amused, from within a pile of brown fluff.

“Well,” Stan cackled, “I guess the –”

He paused to catch his breath. “I guess the cat’s out of the bag! _Literally_ – well, pet carrier, but pretty close!” He started laughing uncontrollably again.

As Ford attempted to get to his feet, seething, the cat happily trotted over to him and bumped its head against his knee. Ford wished it hadn’t. It was harder to be pissed at Stan with an affectionate cat in his lap, a cat he couldn’t bring himself to be angry with no matter how frustrated and confused he was by Stan randomly bringing it back to the boat.

Stan finally got a hold of himself as his laughs turned to coughs. “Man, I’m too old to be laughing this much. You gotta stop bein’ so clumsy, Ford. It’s hazardous to both of our healths.”

“Stanley, why?!” Ford asked. “ _Why_ is there a cat?!”

Stan ignored him. Instead, he rummaged around in the kitchen for moment, procured a roll of paper towel, and then tossed it to Ford. “Ford, meet Ford Junior. She’s friendlier than most dogs I’ve meet and gonna bring us good luck.”

“You named a _female_ cat after me?”

Stan gave him a sinister grin. “So if we adopt a _male_ cat one day, you’re okay with me naming that one after you?”

“No! And we’re not adopting any more cats!” Ford immediately regretted his phrasing, since it implied they’d be keeping the one currently headbutting him and purring… but then again, he didn’t have the heart to make Stan send it back, did he? It _was_ currently purring at him, after all. And he’d be lying if he said he’d never wanted a cat.

“I suppose can keep this one,” Ford conceded, not so much to Stan as to himself. “But you’re going to be the one in charge of taking care of her, and we’re going to rename her to something that doesn’t resemble my name whatsoever.”

“Really, Sixer?” Stan asked him, a huge smile on his face like he knew something Ford didn’t. “I really thought you two would hit it off. I mean, I got her because of you, after all.”

“What do _I_ have to do with…”

Ford thought back to an old book about sailors and cats that he’d read as a self-conscious kid. What had Stan said about the cat – that she’d bring them good luck?

Gently, he picked up one of the cat’s paws to count the toes. There were six.

“I thought you’d never notice!” Stan had a proud smile on his face.

Ford had always wanted a polydactyl cat as a kid, and even more so after finding the Stan O’ War and reading that polydactyl cats were supposed to be good luck for sailors. But first his parents deemed it too expensive, and by the time Ford had the resources to adopt a cat for himself, he was too absorbed in his studies…

“Are you crying?” Stan asked him. “Or are you allergic, ‘cause that would really be a shame.”

Ford rubbed his eyes as Stan kneeled down next to him to give the cat a back rub. She happily purred in response.

“I can’t believe you remembered that I wanted one,” Ford said.

“When we turned thirteen, I tried to find one up for adoption that I could give you as a birthday present,” Stan told him. “Mom shot that one down when I asked her for help, but I remembered looking.”

“We’re still giving her a different name,” Ford told him.

“Yeah, the Ford Junior thing was just a joke. Her real name is Amphitrite, but the people at the shelter said they usually call her Ammie.” Sure enough, Ammie’s ears perked up at the sound of her nickname.

“The Greek goddess of the sea,” Ford mused. “Even the name is perfect.”

“I know, right? I was actually thinking about gettin’ us a cat when our birthday rolled around, but when we decided we’d be stopping here, I looked up the town’s shelter and found out there was a six-toed cat up for adoption. I couldn’t not bring her with us.”

“Stan Pines, using the Internet out of his own free will.” Ford shook his head. “What’s next, reporting your actual income on your tax forms? Actually admitting you like soap operas?”

Ammie meowed at the last one, and Ford chuckled. “I think Ammie likes them too; she’ll watch them with you!”

“Oh, gimme a break!” Stan said. “The cat’s already teaming up with you?”

“I suppose you were right that we’d really hit it off,” Ford told him as Amphitrite headbutted his hand. “I wonder if I could teach her to give me a high six.” 

He held his hand in front of her, fingers stretched out, but she just continued headbutting him. “Ah, well. Close enough for now.”

Stan put on an exaggerated grumpy frown. “Anyways, the adoption fee is paid and I bought her a bed and a couple types of food. She’s supposed to get plenty of meat in her diet but I dunno what type she likes, so once we figure that out we can stock up.”

“Stan, I’ve… never seen you this well organized about anything.” And as simple as it was, it warmed Ford’s heart to know that Stan had done as much for him.

“Yeah, well, I don’t wanna get our boat cat mad at me and ruin our good luck. Anyways, are you gonna change out of that sweater or what?”

Ford had completely forgotten his right sleeve was soaked in coffee. “You couldn’t have activated that good luck a few minutes earlier, could you?” he asked Amphitrite.

She meowed at him happily.

“She likes seeing you make an idiot of yourself,” Stan told him.

“Who gave you the authority to translate?”

“If you can say she wants to watch soaps with me, I can say she’s laughing at you being a klutz. Besides, you saw her when you fell. She thought it was hilarious.”

“Fine, I’ll concede that she looked amused,” Ford admitted. “But I object to the notion that I _fell_. I _dove_ to catch my laptop and heroically sacrificed my sweater. It was all… it was _mostly_ intentional. More intentional than unintentional, at the very least.”

“Have it your way, Sixer,” Stan said, then added: “By the way, Ford, from now on when I say Sixer I mean Ammie, not you.”

Ford promptly left the room without a word to search for a new turtleneck, and deliberately avoided making eye contact with Stan. Amphitrite excitedly followed him, happy to explore her new surroundings.

“You know what we need to do?” Stan asked when Ford finally returned to the kitchen in a new, dry sweater.

“No, what?”

“Show the kids!”

Ford booted up the laptop, careful not to place anything under it this time, and called Dipper and Mabel, which took several tries because Ammie kept stepping on the keyboard. But the kids’ reactions, of course, were worth it.

“Ohmygosh, Grunkle Stan, you really got one! What’s its name?!” “Is it polydactyl? Where’d you find it? Are you bringing it to Gravity Falls next summer?”

“It’s gonna be best friends with Waddles and Gompers! Hey, Waddles, come over here to the camera and say hi!”

As Stan introduced Amphitrite and explained the process of adopting her, Ford found himself relaxing more than he had in weeks. The monster hunting could wait for a few days. They had a cat to get to know.

“Thank you, Stanley,” he said after Dipper and Mabel ended the call to go eat dinner. “I don’t think I ever actually said so, but this means a lot.”

“Hey, I saw an opportunity and I took it,” Stan told him, but Ford noticed him briefly wipe at his eye. “I’m glad you liked it.”

**Author's Note:**

> DPPLH DFWXDOOB SUHIHUV IRUG’V VFL-IL VKRZV WR VWDQ’V VRDSV
> 
> As always, comments are appreciated!


End file.
